# EDP — Engagement Dependency Protocol **v0.1.0 · draft · 2026-08-25 · Zach Shallbetter** A record of what an engagement has received and what it has given, and a trigger that puts the pair in front of the author before more is delivered. Companion to `RCP.md` (which asks whether work terminates) and `record.json` (which asks whether claims are supported). This one asks a question neither can: **what is my position.** --- ## 1. What it measures, and what it refuses to The subject is not a proposition. Every other instrument in this system takes a claim and asks whether the world backs it; the author's own position is a state, so it never reaches a gate and never fails one. That is the gap this closes. **Not hourly.** Hours price time, and time is not what was given. **Not market rate.** The same number in a suit. **Not equity percentage.** Unpriceable where the counterparty's own audit says the platform does not run. **Operational dependency.** What stops if the author leaves. It is the only quantity that tracks the thing that actually moved — work that is hard to claw back, that raises the author's switching cost and the counterparty's leverage. --- ## 2. The artifact record One entry per delivered artifact. Four booleans, all mechanically derivable. ```json { "artifact": "", "in_their_production": true, "sole_operator": true, "infrastructure": "ours | theirs | shared", "covered_by_instrument": false } ``` - `in_their_production` — running and depended on, not merely committed. - `sole_operator` — no one else has committed to it, or no one else can run it. Derive the floor from `git shortlog -sn`; a repo with one author proves the negative cheaply. - `infrastructure` — whose account holds it. Per artifact, not in aggregate. - `covered_by_instrument` — is there a signed document that names this work. `in_their_production && sole_operator` is the pair that matters. The other two state exposure rather than leverage. --- ## 3. The engagement record ```json { "engagement": "", "counterparty": "", "instrument": null, "terms_raised": ["2026-08-03"], "terms_deferred": ["2026-08-03", "2026-08-10"], "consideration_received": null, "first_delivery": "" } ``` `terms_deferred` is the load-bearing field and the expensive one. A deferral does not arrive labeled. It arrives as *sure, after the 12th*, from someone the author likes, about work the author wants to do. Logging it costs one honest keystroke made against the author's own optimism, which is the most expensive kind of keystroke there is. The counter is free; the logging is the whole dependency. **Record the event before knowing whether it was a stall or a sequencing.** That judgment is what the trigger is for. Making it at write time defeats the record. --- ## 4. Derived Two lines, both computed, neither editable. > **Their dependency:** N artifacts in their production with no other operator, > M of them uncovered by any instrument. > > **Your exposure:** K artifacts on infrastructure they control; consideration > received to date; days since first delivery. Both directions, always. An instrument that computes only the first half is a comfort object. Computed together, the pair reads as drift in a direction. --- ## 5. The trigger **`terms_deferred.length >= 2` → the pair goes in front of you, and continuing requires an explicit yes.** The output is a forced look, not a forced exit. A rule that stops automatically has relocated the passivity rather than removed it — from continuing-by-default to stopping-by-default — and the tell is that you would argue with it. You do not argue with instruments; you read them. Exit is one available response, next to: get it in writing, narrow the scope, attach a dated consequence, continue deliberately. --- ## 6. What this does not claim - **That the counterparty acted badly.** The record contains no such field. Three deferrals from three people are a fact about the author's instrumentation before they are a fact about anyone's character. - **That the number is what the author is owed.** Operational dependency is a position, not a valuation. What is owed is a separate question with separate evidence. - **That merged-PR volume measures value.** It counts effort. Kept only as a tripwire, because the sentence *N merged PRs against an unsigned instrument* is one that would have read as absurd in week two and did not exist to be read. It must not drift into a denominator. - **That the pattern is architectural.** See §7. --- ## 7. The generalization is unproven The claim that this is a structural gap rather than one extractive arrangement rests on three engagements, two of them recalled rather than measured. One counterparty deferring is a fact about them. Three independent counterparties producing the same imbalance is a fact about the missing instrument. **Required before the architectural reading is adopted:** run the §3 event definition retrospectively across all three. If it holds three times, the self-instrument is the correct fix. If it holds only once, the honest conclusion is that one arrangement was extractive — and that wants an exit, not a counter. Those purchases are different and the author should know which one is being made. --- ## 8. Status of the central claim The instrument buys exactly one thing: it converts a default into a decision. You could see `deferrals: 2` and continue for reasons that are all true — the work is yours, the platform is yours, the income is real — and none of that would be wrong. The instrument does not make continuing wrong. It makes it yours. It does not reduce the cost of noticing late. It moves the noticing to the front, where the work in between has not happened yet, which is the only place the number is worth anything. Zero conformance history. No engagement has yet been recorded under it.